With apologies to Willie Mays, they are calling what Dana Landers did “The Catch.”

Landers made an amazing defensive play to help USC Upstate win the Atlantic Sun Conference softball championship and earn a berth in the NCAA tournament. In the official play-by-play, it was a pop out to third base. Well, the thing is, Landers plays second base.

With USC Upstate leading Lipscomb, 7-5, in the final inning, Landers roamed out across the second base bag and into left field, dove parallel to the ground and about three feet above it to make The Catch on the leadoff batter. Lipscomb went on to get two hits in the inning, which ended on deep fly to center field.

“If she doesn’t catch that ball, we are probably not still playing,” said USC Upstate head coach Chris Hawkins, whose team made it to the four-team regional at Alabama and opens Friday against Western Kentucky.

Neither Landers nor Mays were on ESPN SportsCenter top 10 plays of the day. For the play by Mays, there was a good excuse. It was 1954 when the center fielder made that over-the-shoulder grab in the World Series. But Landers’ catch was on ESPN3. No excuse for the mothership, the worldwide leader.

Landers and her teammates watched ESPN that night hoping The Catch would be highlighted. They were disappointed.

“The fact that it was not in the top 10 was the most alarming thing,” Hawkins said. “I have never seen anybody start at second base, run all the way past shortstop, do an all-out dive and catch the ball. … I watched all the top 10 plays. There was nothing better.”

“That was definitely top 10 in my book,” said USC Upstate first baseman Cheyenne Griffin from Byrnes High School. “I didn’t think she could get it, but she dove and it was in her glove. She pretty much saved the game, if not the entire season.”

It was no accident. The Spartans practice those types of plays every day. Assistant coach Bryan Pack simulates by throwing the ball just outside their range. Many times, the infielders miss. But they always dive trying. Hawkins estimated that each of them dives at least 150 times per week.

“We really take pride in our defense,” said Landers, who has one error all season (.992 fielding percentage) on a team that leads the nation in fielding percentage, 12 fewer errors than second-best Florida. “Any time we have an opportunity to really show out and do something big, we want to do that. Something like making that catch is really fun.”

About This Blog

Todd Shanesy is an award-winning sports writer who has been twice honored nationally by the Associated Press and more than three dozen times by the South Carolina Press Association. He is a native of Troy, Ohio, and studied journalism at Marshall University (1987 graduate). Shanesy is a former sports editor of the Florence (S.C.) Morning News and has been with the Spartanburg Herald-Journal since 1991.

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